Out of season
By : Juliet D. Golden
What you see is what you get: Poland's image as a gray, post-communist hinterland has down little to encourage tourism.
When Mauro Passaro, a 30-something from Udine, Italy, headed to Poland for a weeklong break last month, he didn't know what he was getting into.
Not high on Italians' list of favorite tourist destinations, the trip to Poland was somewhat of a long shot.
"Normally people from Italy go to France, Greece or even Cuba to spend their holidays, so when I said where I was going, people asked me why, what for," Passaro said.
After touring Warsaw, Krakow, Gdansk, Torun, Czestochowa and the Wieliczka salt mines, Passaro is sure the country is a good bet.
"There are a lot of things to see," he said. "There is good food, people are helpful and a lot of them speak Italian."
Although Passaro may be sold, he is part of a dwindling number of new converts. After being the eighth most popular international tourist destination in 1998, when 18.8 million tourists arrived in the country, by last year the country had slipped to No. 12, passed up by Russia, Austria and Germany, according to the World Tourism Organization (http://www.world-tourism.org). While the mid-1990s saw a rise in tourist numbers driven by a wave of curiosity seekers eager to catch a glimpse of the newly opened country long locked behind the iron curtain, by the new millennium, the allure appears to have disappeared.
"You could say this is a period of a certain stagnation in tourism," said Gwidon Wojcik, president of the Polish Tourist Organization (POT) (http://www.pot.gov.pl). "I think that the simple reserves of those people who came to Poland out of curiosity have been depleted."
With the exotic patina worn off, Poland has an image problem in terms of becoming a viable tourist option. And according to industry experts, too little is being done to package the country to halt the downward spiral.
Part of the problem is that as a tourist product, Poland is a hard sell, at best. In comparison to France, Spain or Greece, Poland lacks the clear-cut images that sell well in international tourist catalogs.
"The image of Poland abroad is unclear," said Grzegorz Pradzynski, president of Orbis Travel (http://www.orbis.com.pl), the country's largest travel agency. "We can't say it's bad (and) we can't say it's good. It's unclear. (Tourists) don't really know what to expect coming here, so they are not attracted."
At worst, to Western European tourists, the country is still frozen in its communist past. Without the right packaging, the country will remain an "underperform," in stockbrokers' speak.
"In Western Europe, Poland is considered a gray, dirty, communist country," Pradzynski said. "It's an image of today's Ukraine. Today it has changed completely, but Poland hasn't communicated that it's changed."
At stake is not just the prestige garnered from a high placement on international rankings, but Poland's piece of the growing international tourism business.
The World Travel and Tourism Council estimates that by 2011 the travel and tourism business will constitute 11% of global gross domestic product, providing more than 260 million jobs worldwide or roughly 9% of total employment.
Last year, about 190 million people were employed globally in tourism.
With unemployment raging at 16% and rising, many argue that a well-developed tourist industry could help offset the country1s heightening economic woes. In Poland's brief tourism heyday of the mid-1990s, employment did rise. While in 1996 the Tourism Institute estimated that 188,000 people were employed in the sector, the level rose by 15% to 217,000 in 1998. However, with the drop in overall tourist numbers, by 1999 employment levels slipped to 216,000.
At present, tourism only provides jobs for 3% of the work force, according to the Economy Ministry.
Even in the No. 12 slot in terms of visitors, Poland does not make much money off the business. Indeed the country doesn't figure into the top 15 countries that earn the most from foreign travelers. Last year, Poland earned $6.1 billion from foreign tourism, on par with Russia's earnings in 1998. France, the No. 1 world tourist destination, raked in nearly $30 billion from foreign tourists last year.
"Countries like France actually live on tourism," Pradzynski said.
For Poland to start living better off the industry, tourist experts said the days of resting on the laurels of past achievements must end. For the country to get a piece of the tourism pie, it will have to move fast to buff up its international image.
"The high numbers of visitors were based on an interest in emerging destinations," said Slawomir Wroblewski, president of Meetings Management (http://www.meetingspoland.pl), an agency that organizes international conferences in Poland. "That's over, now it's time to promote Poland in the face of very tough competition with other destinations in Europe."
Catching up
Don't forget to send a card: A tourist picks over the offerings in Warsaw's Old Town.
While some argue that it's late in coming, the government appears ready to get serious about tourism. In April, the Council of Ministers passed a five-year, zl. 2.5 billion ($625 million) plan to develop and promote Poland's tourism sector. Under the plan, by 2006 tourist visits are due to increase by nearly 4% over 2000 levels. In addition, a large part of the increase is to come from Western European tourists. While Germans last year accounted for just 34% of tourists to Poland, by 2006 that figure is expected to rise to 38%. Tourists from non-neighboring countries today account for only 17% of the total number of travelers. That number is due to increase to almost 42% in 2006.
Revenue from the foreign tourism industry is also expected to rise by about 52% to $9.3 billion and will account for almost 8% of gross domestic product (GDP), according to the Economy Ministry.
A large chunk of the zl. 2.5 billion budget will be spent promoting Poland. If the plans are not thwarted in ministerial or parliamentary budget debates in future years, the country's fledgling tourism promoter POT is expected to receive zl. 375 million ($93.7 million) over the next five years, a significant increase over today's zl. 42 million ($10.5 million) yearly budget. POT was created a year and a half ago as the main tourism promotion agency, taking over the role from ministerial bureaucrats grouped in the State Sports and Tourism Administration.
For tourist industry officials, the strategy's figures are seen as manna from heaven. The lack of funds, they say, is a key obstacle preventing the country from being marketed.
"The biggest problem in promoting tourism in Poland is that absence of funds," said Anna Somorowska, president of the Polish Tourism Development Agency (PART) (http://www.part.com.pl). "Everywhere in the world local organizations have larger budgets than Poland has right now. That's the biggest problem."
On one level, Somorowska may be right. Take Hungary. According to Krzysztof Lopacinski, director of Poland's Tourism Institute (IT), the Hungarian national tourism office budgeted $75 million for this year. POT's budget also pales in comparison to budgets of individual state tourism offices in the United States. In 1999, the Travel Industry Association of America (TIA) (http://www.tia.org) reported that the state of Wisconsin's tourism budget was $15.5 million. Overall in the United States, state tourism offices spent $644 million in 1999, the TIA said.
Adventure films
With an eye to the money, POT has been putting together plans on how to spend it. The centerpiece of its promotion strategy is an $8 million campaign, half of which, according to POT, would be funded by the private sector, including companies like telephone giant Telekomunikacja Polska (TPSA).
The campaign, which will target people aged 20-45 in Europe, will run with the theme "Poland adventures with a happy ending." Using Hollywood adventure film stars such as Sigourney Weaver or Sandra Bullock, it aims to portray Poland as an exciting travel destination for tourists who want to visit a foreign country in a sporty fashion. POT plans to launch the campaign as early as March 2002 in 10 countries, including Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, the U.K., the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Sweden, Denmark, Italy and Hungary.
"A campaign is needed to show that you can have a good time in Poland," Lopacinski said. "Not just to visit the country, but that you can come here and have a good time. That's something that has been missing in promotion up to now."
Others are more lukewarm to the approach, but they admit it's a good start.
"There are people who agree (and) there are people who are against it," Pradzynski said. "I think if they do it at least it will be one thing done. Because for the moment everybody talks about promotion and nothing is done."
In addition to placing ads in pan-European media, the organizers said they also want to use international magazines such as Time and Newsweek.
Billboards will appear in transport centers such as airports and railway stations in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, the U.K. and Switzerland. The campaign is focused on nature in Poland, promoting activities such as biking in the Bieszczady mountains, kayaking in the Mazurian Lakes and watching bison in Bialowieza near the border with Belarus.
At the end of last month POT officials embarked on a five-city tour to explain the campaign to local government leaders and tour operators to help ensure that the country has ready infrastructure wise to absorb a new wave of demanding touristm from Western Europe.
"We want to introduce the campaign at the moment when Poland is ready to absorb a larger number of tourists in this segment," Wojcik said. "Training sessions are underway in all regions so that the tourism industry will be ready and the active tourism product will be better and better."
"We are giving ourselves a year to expand the offer and improve it," Wojcik added.
Down to the basics
Before government coffers are emptied to implement glitzy but costly high-profile campaigns, some tourism industry officials argue that the government and POT officials need to prove themselves on the basics first.
While negotiations are underway in Hollywood, the country has not covered all the bases in terms of getting free promotion, they said.
A case in point they say is the presentation of outdated material on the WTO Web page. While Poland's main competitors, Hungary and the Czech Republic, have their WTO site filled with information about the local tourist industry and contacts worldwide, Poland's information is sparce and inaccurate (http://www.world-tourism.org/members/states/europe/poland.htm).
Instead of including contact numbers for POT's headquarters in Warsaw or any of the 11 offices around the globe, the main contact information for tourism dates back to 1998 and includes the State Sports and Tourism Administration office and the U.N. System Department in the Foreign Affairs Ministry.
"They want to spend $8 million of taxpayers' money, and they are not able to promote their own telephone number and address," Wroblewski said. "First you have to prove with a small amount of money that you are able to promote Poland, then you should get more."
POT officials admit that the absence of updated information in the WTO is a major oversight. "We have asked Poles in WTO two times to update the information," Wojcik said. "That is a problem."
However, POT is also quick to point out that according to its numbers, despite the slip-up, PR efforts including sponsored news articles, radio shows and seminars for journalists reached some 2 million potential tourists last year. POT estimates that the true value of the media coverage resulting from its PR efforts abroad is somewhere around $22 million.
There is some evidence on the ground in Warsaw that the efforts are bearing results. One of the radio listeners earlier his year happened to be the Italian from near Venice, Mauro Passaro.
"I heard about Poland on Radio Monte Carlo," Passaro said. "There was a program where they said that there are a lot of nice places in Poland to visit and it appeared that it was true, there are a lot of things to see."
